


here's to us. who's like us? (Damn few)

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional, F/M, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Musical Composers! AU, Pining, Some Fluff, Unrequited Love, tw: implied/referenced alcohol abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-21 00:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4807448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma Simmons has a shelf full of Tonys, pages full of glowing reviews of her musicals, and one topic she won't talk about: her former writing partner, Leo Fitz.</p><p>Twenty years ago, Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons were going to write the next best musical.  Together.</p><p>This is the story of what happens in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	here's to us. who's like us? (Damn few)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the AOS Big Bang round 3 and with a beautiful accompanying pic set created by etoilesdeglace.
> 
> Title from "Old Friends" from Stephen Sondheim's _Merrily We Roll Along_ , which was the inspiration for this story. Section titles are all lyrics from various Broadway shows.

 

15\. _We do not belong together/And we should have belonged together_  
The dress is exquisite, pale peach that falls in waves around her feet and wraps around her waist more snugly than anyone's arm ever has. It's from some up-and-coming designer whose name she can't remember and it's insured for thousands of dollars and came with a security guard of its very own for this photo shoot. And, underneath the blazing lights of the cameras and the attention of the photographers, it's spectacularly uncomfortable and all Jemma Simmons wants is to get out of it. Well not quite all she wants, because she wants this interview to be over and she wants a cup of tea and she wants her daughter to never reach the sulky teenage stage and she wants another Tony award and she wants Melinda May, her producer, to call and tell her about the funding for their new project and she wants her best friend Bobbi to get back from LA sooner rather than later and sometimes, in her worst moments of weakness, she wants to talk to Fitz.

But for now she'll settle for getting out of the dress, and she breathes a sigh of relief as soon as the photographer is done and she gets to change back into jeans and an oversized gray sweater for the interview. Jemma perches in a wing-back armchair across from the reporter, an up-and-coming girl from the New York Times named Callie Hannigan, and puts on her best smile. “I just wanted to say how much I admire your work,” the girl chirps, eyes wide and shining, and Jemma thinks that she might actually be sincere. After all, she remembers that rush of excitement, the feeling that if you got just a little bit closer you might understand just how people wrote the kind of music that she wanted to write, might understand the music itself, and so when she says thank you, she thinks that she might actually be sincere too.

They talk about Jemma's latest show, a period piece which follows three actresses throughout 1930's Hollywood and the studio system, as they rise and fall and rise again. Its music is jazzy without sounding dated and it's made a star out of Kara Palamas, the actress playing the part of the young and ambitious ingenue who trades her screenwriter lover for stardom. (The part is one that Jemma originally wrote for Skye, before Skye got pregnant four years ago and the awkwardness between them choked the air every time they tried to talk, but that's something Jemma tries not to think about anymore.) In the words of the review of the theater critic at the _New York Times_ , the one that she has pinned up on her wall and that prompted Bobbi to order her an entire chocolate and salted caramel cake from their favorite bakery in celebration, it's “heartbreakingly cynical and sweepingly romantic all at once, a new landmark in the landscape of the American musical”. The show's a smash hit so far and heavily favored to win at next month's Tonys and somehow, after months and months of hearing the songs over and over, first inside her head and then out of it, Jemma still loves it. She loves all her shows and she knows that it's written across her face when she talks about them, eyes glowing and one hand sketching out bars of music in the air.

She tells funny stories about the thirty-second quick change that took up an entire day of tech during the show before this one, and funny-sad stories about submitting her shows to every producer in town, and funny-happy stories about her on the opening night of her (their) first show, alternating between bouncing out of her seat in the back row and downing shots at intermission out of nervousness. And because they're talking about her past shows, inevitably, predictably, they end up talking about Fitz. Jemma gives Callie all her rote responses, stacking all the right polite phrases on top of each other and pasting them together with a smile, until Callie mentions that Fitz has a new show premiering off-Broadway. “Early reviews suggest that it's heavily autobiographical,” Callie says casually. Too casually. “Are you planning on going to see it?”

“I only wish Fitz the best in all his endeavors,” Jemma recites and changes the subject as quickly as she can. When Callie leaves, she tells herself that she's not going to think about it and fails completely. Because autobiographical could mean all kinds of things but each and every last one of them means her and suddenly Jemma is angry, ready to tip right over the edge into furious, call her lawyer, and discuss the possibility of a libel suit. What right does he have to put their past on display, scribble it all down on one of his yellow legal pads, have someone else set it to music, and spread it out across the stage for the entire theater world to see? It's as much her past as it's his, all those years of having their names linked together, and even if they haven't talked in almost five years, he should have asked her first.

But then Jemma remembers that Fitz doesn't have the best track record when it comes to asking her first, assuming that he knows her even when he no longer does, and she sinks down into her sofa and sighs heavily. Really, what did she expect from him? Does she still have the right to expect anything from him? Her phone is flashing on a nearby table and she reaches for it to slide a finger across the lock screen and see that she has three new messages, all missed when she switched her phone to silent for the interview.

The first one is from Lance Hunter, who's apparently now Fitz's legal counsel (a terrible decision on someone's part, she's sure), telling her not to worry about the show. The please don't sue us goes unsaid. _They're fictional characters_ , the message reads, and _even if they were possibly based on real people, the completely fictional character that may be loosely based on you comes out in a pretty good light. Eleven o'clock number and everything._ Jemma doubts it.

The second one is from her ex-husband, who wants to know what time she's picking Sophie up for the weekend. She texts him back quickly, with an extra thank you thrown in for good measure. She always feels the need to thank Antoine, for making things so much less worse than they could have been.

The third message is from May. The nominations are in and Jemma's show has ten, one of them for her. Jemma squeals in delight and bounces up and down on her couch like she's twenty-three again, quickly sends a message to Bobbi (this one might call for cake _and_ champagne), and reminds herself that she's allowed to be happy.

14\. _You never noticed how the wind had changed/I didn't see a way we both could win._  
“Just say you're sorry, Fitz,” Skye says it like it's the simplest thing in the world when it's anything but. “You're Fitz and Simmons, and you guys are better off together than apart. It's not too late to fix this, I promise.”

“It was already too late,” Fitz mumbles. Skye came right over after it happened, just marched in through his door with a “what the hell were you thinking, Fitz?” and two bags full of Chinese food, because Skye knows him and she knew exactly where he would be: sprawled out across his couch with his head buried in his hands, the years-old pain in his shoulder making an unwelcome reappearance, and desperately wanting a drink but knowing that that's the very last thing he needs. Fitz probably would have stayed like that for days if Skye hadn't shown up and he feels a huge surge of gratitude for her. He and Skye got close after the accident, while Jemma was trapped in rehearsals 24/7 ( _dealing with the mess you left_ , a nasty little voice reminds him) and barely had the time to drop by during dinner breaks, let alone spend any actual time with him. But Skye did, driving up to the clinic each and every time he was allowed to have visitors, taking him on a road trip to Vermont when he finally got out and daring him to eat an entire quart of Ben and Jerry's, bringing him dinner at least once a week, never letting him be alone with his own thoughts for too long. (Now, Fitz tells himself that he's not allowed to be angry about the way that Jemma dropped out of his life for months but he doesn't always succeed.) “It's been too late for months,” he adds.

“Has it? Or is that just what you've been telling yourself so you can stay here and feel sorry for yourself?” Skye gives him a fierce look, punctuating her words with the piece of orange chicken on her chopsticks. 

“I'm not...I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I meant what I said, and I'm not changing my mind,” Fitz says stubbornly. “If she wants to try to change my mind, she can come and talk to me herself.” She won't, though. He knows that. Fuck, maybe that's even why he did it, because he knew that she wouldn't resist, that she wouldn't come after him and fight for them. Because if she had, if she'd looked at him with her big brown eyes, if she'd said that they needed each other, Fitz knows that he would have given in. 

“Fitz, sometimes you have to take the first step, you know? Just try a little, meet her halfway, you'll write another show together, and the music will do its best to fix it all. That's what it does, isn't it?” Skye coaxes, trying to get him to smile. Yes, music saved Skye, Fitz admits, made her into a star, gave her a career and a purpose, and got her far, far away from a series of shitty foster homes and an even shittier pair of birth parents. And when she's up on stage, she's unstoppable, the power of her voice enough to make the stage shake. So she thinks that all he and Jemma have to do is make more music together but Skye doesn't realize that it may have been the music that became the problem.

“Why can't she be the one who meets me?” he pleads, hating the desperate note he can hear in his voice. “She went so far away—why can't she be the one to come back?'

“Maybe you went away too.” Skye shrugs and adds some more steamed rice to her orange chicken, tapping one hand against her thigh as she hums to herself. She must have picked that habit up from him somewhere along the line. “Wow...look at me. All deep and thoughtful,” Skye laughs. “I guess we're growing up after all.”

“She doesn't need me anymore,” Fitz blurts out. “When we first started out, she was the awkward one, you know. Always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person and me having to smooth it all over—the first time we met May, you know, she made this terrible joke about hiding a body. But it worked because we balanced each other out. Then she studied her way to better social skills and learned how to do the whole small talk and being charming thing—not that she wasn't always charming, because she was to me--” Fitz stops, takes a breath. “Anyway, she didn't need my help anymore. Not with that. But we still had the show we were working on and we were still supposed to be a team. Until she didn't need me for that anymore either.” The first time he'd heard a song that Jemma had written by herself, even knowing that she hadn't had much of a choice, it had felt like a punch straight to the gut.

“Even if she didn't need you anymore,” Skye adds, rolling her eyes like it's the most impossible idea ever. “She wants you around. She wants you to write that show with her. Look, Fitz, I just want both of you to be happy. And you always seemed happiest when you were around each other.”

“But she doesn't want me in the same way that I want her. She never will,” he says plainly. And he's spent half his life being hopelessly, heartbreakingly in love and he is so very tired, right down to his bones, and he simply can't do it any longer. Leo Fitz will never stop being in love with Jemma Simmons, he knows that, but right now he needs to be in love from far away, where the light of her can't blind him. He tries to tell Skye this, tripping over his words and twisting his hands together so they don't shake, and when he's done, she sighs and scoots closer to put her arm around him. Fitz leans his head against hers and they sit there together for a while, breathing in and breathing out, until he reaches over and steals the last egg roll and she tickles him in retaliation and they're both laughing way more than the occasion warrants just because they're so relieved that they can laugh again and Fitz tells himself that it's going to be—that it has to be—okay.

Skye only asks him once if he ever tried to tell Jemma how he felt and he says no. There's a stack of yellow legal pads in the locked bottom drawer of his desk, each and every page filled with lyrics that will never be set to music, that makes him a liar.

They go for long walks together and she lets him try to string words into sentences and doesn't say anything when he can't finish them. When they spot her ex-boyfriend in the Village, Fitz lets her pull him into an alleyway and wait until they're both sure he's far, far away. Some days he hangs out in her trailer while she's on set, filming her latest scene for the New York set-teen drama that she plays a recurring character on, and when an idea for a lyric floats into his head, sometimes he even writes it down. They eat impossible amounts of greasy food together and watch an endless series of bad action movies and they learn to live with and in and around each other, until knowing each other's rhythms seems as natural as breathing. 

Nine months later, she kisses him and he lets her. They are not _in_ love and they never will be, but they love each other all the same and falling in love has never treated either of them well, leaving them with a matching set of broken hearts. And after all, sometimes in a huge and lonely world you need someone else to hold on to you, as hard as they can, and never let go. And Skye holds on to him like she needs him to hold on to her too.

13\. _We did what we had to do/Won't forget/Can't regret what I did for love_  
“Let me fix your tie,” Jemma murmurs and then she's leaning over him and Fitz has to shut his eyes tight against the overload of her, her hair brushing against the front of his shirt and her scent drifting through the air and her warmth only inches away. She's been overwhelming him for years and years now, since he was seventeen, and he used to almost love it, the way that he could get drunk off just a glimpse of her. But he's sworn off getting drunk on anything now and he bats her away when her hands fumble at his collar.

“I've got it,” he replies and inches away from her. Jemma's hands drop to her lap like she's burned them and she bites at her lip nervously as something that might be hurt flashes across her face. Fitz tells himself that he must be mistaken. Things are okay now for him and for Jemma, he thinks that they might even be good: she just won three different awards, the first ones that she hasn't had to share with him, and when theater people talk about her, they say her name like it glows and they've got a new show already lined up and even if he doesn't want to think about it, he knows that she's dating a new guy, the first since her divorce. Things are good for Jemma and he can't mess it up.

This is their first interview together since _the incident_ and ostensibly it's a chance for them to announce their new project, just a short puff piece on one of New York's million morning shows, but people are watching, wondering if they're as inseparable as they used to be. They aren't, but no one besides them needs to know that. Years ago, they would have been right next to each other on the couch, thighs pressed against each other and hands nearly touching, words and music flying back and forth between them, and they wouldn't have even thought twice about it. Years ago, they wouldn't have been able to stop writing musicals if they tried. But today, the space between them feels like a million miles and even though he can tell that she has a melody running through her head, he has no idea what it could be. Over on her corner of the couch, Jemma's as curled up as she can get without rumpling her blouse and if she bites at her lip any longer, he knows that she's going to draw blood. “Hey, don't worry,” he hears himself say and he splays his hand flat out on the couch cushion, palm up so she can take it if she wants to. “By the time we're done, we'll have producers lining up out the door to throw money at us.” She gives him a half smile and Fitz feels his heart hopelessly swell in his chest. It's never known when to give up. “And I mean literally throwing money at us,” he continues. “We'll be just as seductive as the Leading Player in _Pippin_ , as played by Patina Miller, thank you very much, and we'll tell them to join us and leave their fields to flower and their cheese to sour—no idea what Stephen Schwartz was thinking when he came up with that rhyme, by the way. And boom! They'll be following us along in a slinky Fosse way.” He gives her his best jazz hands and she laughs and all he needs to be happy in this moment is to hear her laugh again. Strangely fitting, he thinks, since he is the one who needs and needs and needs her these days, needs her even when he sees less and less of her every day.

Then someone appears to drag Jemma off and touch up her makeup, and Fitz is left alone again with half an hour to go before they're supposed to be on camera. So he digs a yellow legal pad and a pencil out of his bag and he tries to write. The key word there being try. The words haven't been coming to him since it happened—since before it happened, if he's being honest with himself—but if he keeps on trying, they've got to show up eventually. He finds his rhyming dictionary too and balances it on one knee, already reciting the one line over and over inside his head. _It gets under your skin first, then into your bones, until you're already cursed._ Fitz stops there--a song about falling in love shouldn't sound like a song about catching the plague. Fitz sighs, tears the page out of his pad, crushes it ferociously in one hand, and throws it across the room. God, he can do better than this. Can't he? 

Jemma's phone buzzes from where it's been resting on the couch and he reaches over to grab it, ready to shout through the door and tell Jemma about whoever's calling. She always forgets her phone, shoving it down between two couch cushions or throwing it carelessly on the top of her dresser, and so he's used to relaying calls and texts to her. Fitz doesn't even stop to think about it as he keys in her code, until he sees the message that's popped up. It's an email from Melinda May, their longtime producer, and it's barely three lines long, which may be a new record for May. 

_The money just isn't coming through, Jemma._  
_You're the only one they want._  
_I'm sorry._

Fitz can't breathe. The room is closing in around him and he can hear the blood rushing through his body and even though he knows he shouldn't, he finds himself scrolling back through the long chain of emails between Jemma and May. It's easy to see, once he starts looking for it. There's rumors swirling around that he's lost his touch, that he hasn't been able to write a word since he got back from the treatment facility and on his worst days, he thinks that they're probably true. The producers don't want to take a chance on him, to see if there's anything left to drag out of his head: they only want Jemma instead. Beautiful, brilliant, successful Jemma. Jemma who everyone wants. Jemma, who no longer needs him to write the words to her music. Jemma, who's still arguing and arguing that she needs him there beside her, still trying to help him, to save him. And all of a sudden, Fitz knows what he has to do.

He has to set her free. He has to set them both free, to free Jemma from dragging him along behind her and free himself from seeing her drift further and further away from him (from the chance that she'll ever feel the same) with every day. It's so simple that he marvels at how he hasn't realized it yet. They've been teetering on the edge of a final break for months, not seeing each other for days on end, arguing about the same show that's supposed to bring them back together, and he has to be the one to give them the final push. Otherwise he'll just go on riding on her coattails forever, clinging endlessly to her, smothering her with his love (and needing her so desperately isn't the way that he wants to love her), until the only thing she feels for him is pity and they're a shadow of what they once were. 

So when they go out there for the interview, he jumps in before Jemma can even answer the host's first question. They're meant to announce the new show, but instead Fitz announces the dissolution of their partnership. Effective immediately.

He leaves before Jemma can say anything else, before he can see the look on her face, before he can give himself the chance to change his mind.

12\. _Art isn't easy/Even if you're smart/You think it's all put together/But then something falls apart._  
It's the middle of the night and Jemma is sure of one thing: The Great Gatsby should never, ever have been turned into a musical. Barring that, she and Fitz should never have agreed to write the musical. And above all, she should never have agreed to write the show on her own. She has a deadline that's been pushed back over and over again and that's finally hit its breaking point. In one month, everyone will be expecting a fully-written show, which Jemma doesn't have. To be exact, she has one song and a half with words, four songs that are still missing them, a two-page plot outline, and one incredibly battered copy of the book, covered in Fitz's messy notes and her blue Post-Its and with one set of lyrics scrawled inside the front cover.

With a sigh, she pulls herself up from the floor, where she's surrounded herself with drifts of paper and stacks of books on the 1920's, the Fitzgeralds, the book itself, and anything she can think of that might help her, and moves to her kitchen to switch the tea kettle on. Tea solves everything, in her opinion. She spots Fitz's mug, the one emblazoned with a monkey face, when she reaches for her usual caffeine molecule mug and has to choke back tears when she sees that it's gathering dust. It's ridiculous, really, to start crying over a mug—it's just that she misses him rather desperately. He's only allowed phone calls for half an hour every day at the center, and he's not at the point in his program where he's allowed visitors yet and even if he was, she wouldn't have the time to drive up and see him since all her days are occupied with the show...the show that he left her to do alone. But Jemma is not angry about that at all. Not one bit. And even if she is, she will not let him know it and she will wait until she's calm enough, understanding enough, patient enough, _good_ enough to call him. Until she can carry on a conversation without asking him why he did it. Until she can talk to him without asking him if he did it because of her, if she's the thing that pushed him to the brink.

The why doesn't matter in the end though, she thinks. The only thing that matters is that it happened and that the show that should have been theirs is now only hers. The show that she has to finish. Mug of tea in hand, she sinks back down among her papers and idly flips pages in the hope of finding some kind of inspiration. Sophie is at her dad's this week, which means that Jemma can stay awake all night without the need to drag herself out of bed in the morning to make her snack and walk her over to preschool and do all the million different things that make up their morning routine. It means that she can sleep till noon and stay indoors all day with her pad of sheet music and possibly a bottle of red wine, and briefly lead the kind of life that she had before she was a mom. The kind of life that she and Fitz had back when they were still trying to break through, spread out on the floor of her crappy apartment at four in the morning and banging away on her rickety piano just to irritate her neighbors. The kind of life that maybe she's outgrown now.

Jemma gets up to go to sleep, promising herself that she'll come back to it in the morning, when a bright blue Post-it catches her eyes. It's stuck to the top of one of her notebooks, a few words neatly printed across it in her handwriting. _Let's be fools together_ , it reads. And all of a sudden, Jemma hears a song. Music and lyrics, verses and bridge, melody and harmony, she hears it all. And she knows that that's it. That's her show. It's different from anything she's written with Fitz, heartbreaking and classical to his bright, pop-inflected optimism, and for a moment she hesitates—what if it's not right? What if it's not what they want? What if whatever she is without him isn't right? But then another melody floats into her head, words tumbling along after it, and it's beautiful and it's unquestionably, completely hers. 

Jemma sits back down, grabs a pad of paper, and starts writing.

11\. _Sometimes people leave you halfway through the wood/Others may deceive you/You decide what's good_  
Jemma hates pretty much everything about hospitals. She hates the molded plastic chairs in each and every room, and the harsh, antiseptic smell, and the endless reruns of Law and Order playing on mute on the waiting room TV, and the pitying smiles that the nurses give her when they pass by in the hallway. And most of all, she hates the fact that she has to be here and she hates the reason why even more.

“I got us coffee,” Skye announces and flops down in a seat next to her. “Any news on our Sleeping Beauty?”

“He's fine,” Jemma says stiffly, eyes darting over to where Fitz lies in the bed. There's a bruise stretching along the length of his jaw and his wrist is bent at an odd angle where they've splinted it, but all the tubes and wires came out pretty quickly once he woke up and the doctors say that he'll be just fine physically. Of course, they didn't say anything about psychologically but Fitz has been very, very far from fine psychologically for quite a while now, she thinks bitterly. Even before he got falling-down drunk, stripped down naked, went swimming in the ocean, got caught in a rip tide, knocked himself out on a rock, and was rescued by the Coast Guard on a beach off the Hamptons. It sounds worse when she puts it together like that. 

“They told me that they're going to discharge him this afternoon,” Jemma adds and carefully places the coffee that Skye gives her underneath her chair. It's not that she doesn't appreciate Skye being here, appreciate everything that Skye's done for Fitz in the past few years, especially during the months when Jemma was getting her divorce and bent double with heartbreak. It's that she wants—she needs--this moment to be just her and Fitz, the two of them fixing what she's afraid is broken. And she and Fitz always used to be a unit, the two of them against the world, invincible and unbreakable, but some days it feels like it's Skye and Fitz laughing in a corner, swapping drinks and jokes and low-budget horror movies, and Jemma getting everything done. She's the one who talks to people now, who closes the deals and charms the producers, who pulls out the piano and the Great American Songbook without a second thought. She's the adult and she likes it. But she doesn't want to be the only one. “I found a few places. Treatment centers,” she clarifies. “And he's going to pick one and we're leaving for it as soon as he gets out.”

“You think that he needs to go into treatment?” Skye asks quietly. “It's that serious?”

“I think he should have gone before it got this serious,” Jemma snaps. Her voice is sharper than she wants it to be, but there's a part of her wondering if all of this is her fault, if she should have watched more closely, noticed sooner, dragged him back herself. And if she doesn't let that knife-edged part out somehow, she thinks that it might tear her up from the inside. And another, even smaller, even sharper part of her is wondering why Skye didn't notice anything.

“I'm sorry, Jemma,” Skye says and reaches over to rest a hand on Jemma's shoulder. It's a little awkward at first, since they used to be closer than they are now, twenty-something and giggling and just reckless enough to dance all night and confess three am secrets. Somewhere along the way, they fell out of each other's orbits, but then Jemma relaxes into Skye's touch and she realizes that Skye might think what happened to Fitz is her fault too. “What can I do?”

“I might need you to drive him to the facility, once we pick it. It's my weekend with Sophie,” Jemma explains. “And Antoine's watching her right now but he's supposed to be at a conference and he's really doing me a huge favor right now and I don't want her to—I can't let her see her Uncle Fitz like this. Then I have to call the producers and see if we have to put the show on hold and release a statement to the press, because there's no way that Fitz can do it and--”

“Whatever you need, Jemma,” Skye says firmly, before she can spiral off into an endless to-do list. “I'll take care of him and you'll take care of everything else.” And afterward, that's the way it always is: Skye is with Fitz while Jemma does everything else.

But for now, as Skye slips out of Fitz's room when he starts to stir, knowing to leave Jemma alone with him for the first few minutes, it's the last few minutes of Fitzsimmons. One last memory of the way they once were. Fitz wakes up bleary-eyed and confused until he sees her and then it's like his world clicks back into place. His hand laces itself through hers and he's apologizing and for the first time ever, he's telling her that he doesn't know what to do and then she's promising him that it'll all be okay and she squeezes his hand back. Hard, like it's the last time she'll ever do it.

10\. _But clearly I can't stay/We'd both go mad that way/So here I go_  
The divorce is quiet and polite and not a minute longer than it needs to be. There are no lawyers dramatically slamming down key pieces of evidence on the table, no last-minute courtroom confrontations, no teary-eyed Sophie on the witness stand. No one is wrong, no one is right, and Jemma wonders how this can hurt so much more than if she'd screwed it all up on her own. But it needed two of them to tear down everything that they'd built together and right now, it needs two of them to sign the divorce papers and sign Antoine Triplett out of her life.

She's not in love with him anymore. She no longer feels her stomach swoop when he's nearby or that surge of warmth that used to pulse out straight from her heart when he says her name or that faint magnetic pull that made her edge closer to him the very first time that they met, lured in by the promise of safety and stability to seemed to radiate off his broad shoulders and easy grin. But she still _loves_ him, still hates the hurt that she can see in the way he avoids her eyes and clenches his hands at his sides, still wants the best for this man who deserves only that, and Jemma has never been so aware of the difference between loving someone and being in love with them in her life. They fell apart so slowly, so gradually that even now she can't pinpoint the moment where they went wrong, worn down by the long business trips he had to take for his job consulting with the CIA and the long nights that she spent glued to her piano with Fitz by her side and all the little things that had turned out to be so much bigger than they'd thought.

They sign the divorce papers slowly, carefully, and in near silence. Then they walk out together into the summer day and the blazing sunlight, which somehow feels strangely suitable for all of it. Getting divorced in pouring rain would have been a bit too on the nose, Jemma thinks wildly and has to stifle a giggle that's half a sob. She's just about to hit her breaking point, she knows that, and so she stiffens her spine and keeps her face frozen in a calm mask when Antoine turns to her to say his goodbyes and check when he'll be picking Sophie up next week. (Joint custody, the most polite joint custody that's probably ever been agreed upon, because no matter what's happened between them, they both love Sophie more than anything else in the world.) 

“I, ah...Good luck,” she blurts out when he turns to leave, already five feet away from her. “You must know that I...I'm sorry. Truly. For the way that everything happened. For how we...”

“I know. I'm sorry too, Jemma.” It's the last time he'll ever say her first name, even if she doesn't know it. After this, he'll go back to calling her Simmons, the casual nickname that he gave her back when they first met, before they even started dating. Or he won't use her name at all. “I hope that you...I hope that the two of you figure it out.” And with that, he's gone, leaving a confused Jemma behind him. She doesn't have anyone to figure it out with, can't even think about dating anyone right now, and then she remembers and sighs, almost letting herself fall back against the side of the building before she reminds herself that she can't let anyone catch her like this. Late one night, during the first few days after they'd started talking about a trial separation, Antoine had asked her if she was in love with someone else. She'd said no, but it had been late and they'd both been exhausted and for whatever reason, he hadn't believed her and it looked like he still didn't. She wasn't, she hadn't been, she would have known but sometimes Jemma wonders if it would have been easier if she had been.

She's about to hail a cab to go and pick Sophie up from daycare, because she promised her daughter ice cream and there will be serious consequences if she reneges on that promise and because listing off everything she has to do might take her mind off of what she's just done, when she sees Fitz. He's practically sprinting down the sidewalk, despite the fact that Fitz and running are not two words that she would ever put together in a sentence, and the Starbucks tray that he's carrying is probably going to spill any minute now. If Jemma had to bet on it, he's probably hungover, sleep-deprived, and grumpier than one of the Seven Dwarfs. His shirt is buttoned lopsidedly, his hair is sticking straight up, there's a huge coffee stain on his khaki shorts, and he doesn't look anything like the man who was ranked number nine on the list of New York's Most Eligible Theater Bachelors. (Jemma had teased him about that article for _days_.) But he's here for her, like he always has been.

“Jemma,” he says and immediately drops the tray so he can hug her. Fitz wraps his arms around her, letting her tuck her head into the space between his shoulder and chin where she's always fit perfectly, and he holds on to her like he's never going to let go and then—only then—does Jemma Simmons let herself cry. “Hey,” he murmurs. “Jemma, it's all going to be okay. I promise. It's going to hurt for a while, yeah, but then you're going to feel better. This kind of shit...it happens. And it sucks, and then it gets better and you get through it. You will. Because you're strong and smart and beautiful and you write music like no one else.” Jemma gives another little sob and clings on to him even more tightly.

“You're my best friend in the world,” she says and even though the words are muffled by his shirt, she knows that he hears them perfectly. They've been going through a rocky patch lately, with her divorce and his social life and the show that they can't quite seem to get right, but in this moment, Fitz is absolutely, completely her best friend and right now, right here, he could be all she needs to feel better. 

“You're my best friend, too,” he replies. It's like two halves of the same sentence, the way he says it back. Eventually, Jemma loosens her grip on him enough for him to hand her one of the teas that survived and a giant chocolate chip scone. One arm goes right back around her shoulders afterward, so she can lean on him if she wants to, but now they're far enough away that she can see the hint of a smile on his face. “And you know...I was thinking, after this show, we could do one about divorces? I'm seeing a really great number for the Greek chorus of lawyers—they start off with chanting a bunch of weird legalese, really solemnly, and then boom! Suits off, commence the rock number.”

Much to her surprise, Jemma laughs.

9\. _This plot has got a lot of deja vu in it/Familiarity/And we both know what that breeds_  
“It's an American classic, Fitz. If we change the ending, people will know,” Jemma sighs. They've been holed up in her apartment for hours on end and three pots of tea (her), one and a half stiff drinks (him), and a dramatic reading of _The Great Gatsby_ later, they're no closer to coming up with the Tony-award winning, heartbreaking, mesmerizing, box-office smash that they were hired to create. Normally they don't do adaptations, especially not after the excruciatingly awkward meeting where Disney had offered them an inordinate amount of money to make a stage version of Cars and Fitz had asked if all the actors were going to put on roller skates, because Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber had tried that before and it had been bloody awful. In fact, after that meeting, they'd put a moratorium on any kind of adaptation, unless the source material was so obscure that neither of them had ever heard of it. Until May had shown up with an offer they couldn't refuse: a top-notch production team, a director with the promise to listen to any ideas that they bring to the table, and Skye as Daisy Buchanan. She's been one of their favorite actresses to work with ever since she auditioned for their first off-Broadway show with a showstopper and a smile, and Fitz is already planning a gorgeous duet for her and Gatsby. If he can figure out a good rhyme for shirts. Or if they could stop arguing and start writing.

“It's just depressing,” Fitz counters. “No one wants to pay a hundred dollars and spend two and a half hours at the theater to emerge with a message about how the American Dream is a lie. And I'm not saying that we should change it...I just think that maybe it could be a little more cheerful.”

“It's not a cheerful book, Fitz. Which you should know, because we just read it,” Jemma grumbles. “If people want spectacle and dancing and happily ever after, they can go see _The Lion King_. Musicals don't have to be happy, you know.”

“Yes, but that's what people want them to be. Name the last depressing musical that was a success on Broadway.” Fitz abruptly stops pacing and flops down across her couch to scowl up at her ceiling. He's always been stubborn, quick to pout when he doesn't get his way, yet for years and years, she was usually the one who was able to talk him around. Jemma tells herself that he's just in a bad mood this morning (afternoon, technically). Maybe even because she was the one who really wanted to do this show, who talked and pleaded and promised until he gave in and signed the contract, running a hand through his hair and muttering something about green lights as he signed his name so hard that the ink bled through the paper. It isn't exactly Fitz's kind of show, but their styles have always been a little different and they've always balanced each other out perfectly. That's what makes them such a great fit for Gatsby, she tells herself: the cool, world-weary jazz melodies that she already hears drifting through her head and the dreamers' words that she knows will burst out of his pen as soon as they get a proper start.

“ _Les Miserables_. It's even in the show's name,” she says triumphantly. “Maybe people want something different, Fitz. Something that doesn't wrap up every last stray end in a neat bow, because real life's not nearly that neat. And this show can be that. It doesn't just have to be one thing, it can be lots of things. Glitter and heartbreak.”

“Glitter and heartbreak.” Fitz tests the words out on his tongue. “I like it. Sure we can't change the title to that?”

“Our creative license doesn't extend that far.” Jemma rolls her eyes fondly at him. “Either way, the depressing ending stays. Because I would like to spend the rest of my life not being sued by the Fitzgerald estate, thank you very much.” She chucks a pencil up at him and he yelps and ducks. “Come on, wake up. Let's start writing that romantic duet. If you pass me the rhyming dictionary, I'll even look up a rhyme for shirts for you.” He laughs and throws the pencil back at her and for a moment, as they start to toss ideas back and forth, they're in perfect harmony.

They've got a song and a half written when her phone rings and Jemma swears. “I've got to go pick up Sophie,” she says apologetically. “I'm sorry, Fitz, really I am but I swear I'll be back soon and once I've got her down for her afternoon nap, we can go right back to writing. Are you going to be around this evening?”

“Told you that you should have hired a nanny,” Fitz mutters under his breath. 

“I was not going to hire a nanny to take care of my one and only child,” Jemma retorts, arms crossed high on her chest, and then gentles her voice. “You can come along if you want. She'd love to see her uncle Fitz.”

“I've got a party to go to tonight,” he says and avoids her eyes. Fitz always has a party to go to, especially after his most recent (and most painful, Jemma suspects) breakup and she worries that he thinks he can just cover up a broken heart with an endless whirl of champagne and clubs. “One and only?” he adds. “I thought you were going to try for more?”

“Trip and I have been barely talking for the last few months, so no. We're actually...” Jemma gulps for breath. She hasn't told this to anyone yet, or she hasn't quite wanted to acknowledge that it's real. “We're going through a trial separation.”

“Oh God, Jem. I'm so sorry.” Fitz slides off the couch to wrap his arms around her from behind and she leans back against him with a heavy sigh. She can feel him breathing and hear the thump of his heart where she's pressed against his chest, and when she shuts her eyes, she can almost pretend that this is all there is. That it's as simple as him and her and the music, that they'll stop arguing and write another show and the new shape her world's taken on will make sense again. Then her phone rings again. “Go,” he tells her firmly. “I have to make an appearance at the party, but I'll try to come back here as soon as I can. We'll order some Chinese, maybe watch a movie with the subtitles on so Sophie doesn't wake up. I'm here, Jemma. I swear.”

He doesn't come back that night. Jemma tries not to feel disappointed and asks herself if she really expected him to.

8\. _I've got those god-why-don't-you-love-me blues_  
“I can't believe I just accepted a Tony in a maternity evening gown,” Jemma declares. “Actually, I can't believe I just accepted a Tony. Again.” She looks very, very close to squealing with delight and the happiness on her face makes Fitz swell up with happiness too. In the months of rehearsal before it opened, they joked about this show being Jemma's other baby, the one with a different father. (Needless to say, they don't tell those kinds of jokes around Trip.) But it's true, down to the blood, sweat, and tears required to produce it, the one lucky night when Fitz and Jemma first came up with the idea, and Jemma's near-constant cravings for pickles from that one weird deli uptown. Plus, as Fitz jokes in his worse moments, the show even was gracious enough to emerge full-formed upon opening night, rather than taking years to develop into a fully functioning human being. However, besides him, no one seems to think this is funny. Skye actually clamped her hand over his mouth to get him to stop when he pointed out the difference for the first time. Late at night, he can admit that the only reason he says things like that is because he's (still) jealous.

The show has been in the works for two and a half years and now five drafts, three different theaters, and two directors later, it just swept the Tonys and Fitz and Jemma each have a second shiny statuette to put on their mantelpiece. “You deserved it, Jemma,” Fitz says when he can finally tear his eyes away from her. She's perched across from him on the seat of the limo that's taking them to the after party and she seems to glow under the lights of New York City, colored flashes passing over her pale skin and royal blue gown that only make her eyes shine brighter in comparison, and she's so beautiful that it makes his heart hurt.

“You deserved it too, silly,” she teases back. “We wrote this show together, every last bit of it.” It's true. They spent almost every waking hour together while they were writing it, sprawled out on the floor of their studio with drifts of paper and takeaway boxes of Chinese, arguing and agreeing as Jemma picked out melodies on the grand piano she'd bought after they won their first Tony and Fitz tried to sing three different vocal parts at once. They'd only taken one day off, for Jemma's wedding. “God, remember when we wrote that duet? The night before the wedding, when I was on that awful grapefruit diet so I could fit into the dress.” Jemma winces.

“And then you nearly missed your own wedding because we'd stayed up till three finishing it and you overslept?” It had been a good night: pounding out the song together and revising it over and over, Jemma giving his food a longing side-eye until he caved and let her have some, neither of them mentioning the wedding waiting for her in the morning.

“ _Someone_ was supposed to wake me up.” Jemma rolls her eyes at him affectionately. “And as I remember it, you were even later than I was. I actually worried for a bit that you weren't going to show up.”

“Wouldn't have missed it for the world,” he lies. 

“Fitz...” she trails off and now her face has a concerned look on it that he knows means trouble as she leans across to place a hand on his knee and stare right into his eyes. “Fitz, when are you going to get married?”

“Well, when I start dating someone, for one,” he replies lightly. He's dated casually over the years, a dinner date here and a gala there, but he's never been with anyone for long and the one time that it lasted for a whole four months, they spent the entire last month stuck in a series of arguments, where she accused him of caring more about his job (and by extension, Jemma) than he did about her and he didn't say anything back because it was basically true. They were all doomed from the start, really. Because there's only one girl that Fitz has ever wanted and right now she's sitting across from him with another man's ring on his finger, due to give birth to that other man's child in three months, and Fitz has always been too stubborn to admit defeat, even when he really, really should. Because she may be going to have a child with Trip but she has three shows with him, and she may give her nights to Trip but she gives all her days to him, and he'll take anything he can get. “Careful, there, or you'll start sounding like one of the wives from _Company_ ,” he adds. “Only my name doesn't have half as many nicknames as Robert—Leopold doesn't exactly make for a nice line, does it?”

“No, I'm serious, Fitz,” she presses on, drawing back and clasping her hands together in her lap. She's about to give him the puppy dog eyes any minute now, Fitz knows, the same ones that have made him rewrite lyrics and make her breakfast and be her wingman at an endless series of hipster bars. He tells himself that he's going to resist. “I just—it'd be good to see you with someone. To know that you had that in your life. I worry. I shouldn't, but I do,” she says urgently. “People aren't meant to be all by themselves. They have friends and family and lovers and they—don't you want to be in love, Fitz? Don't you want to take that chance?”

“What, because you and Trip are doing so well?” It comes out of his mouth before he can think any better of it, and he's apologizing a second later, when he sees Jemma's face go white and her eyes go wide with the effort to hold back tears. She wouldn't tell him if it was, but Fitz still has the feeling that the baby is a bit of a last-ditch effort to shore up Jemma's marriage, a stopgap tossed into the midst of all the long weeks spent apart and the longer days that Jemma spent in rehearsal when Trip was actually in town. “I didn't mean that,” he says, quick as he can, and moves over so he can sit beside her in the car. “I'm so sorry, Jemma. You two'll be all right, I'm sure. I'm sorry. Look,” he offers. “You can set me up with whoever you want tonight, anyone at all.”

“Careful,” Jemma says and holds back a sniffle. “I might decide to try to introduce you to Bernadette.”

“Jemma, if you introduced me to Bernadette Peters, I would get down on my knees and worship her as a goddess. You too, of course,” he adds without even thinking about it. “Seriously, anyone you want.”

“You've been drinking, haven't you?” Jemma eyes him with suspicion. “You would have all kinds of loopholes otherwise.”

“I've been drinking all your champagne for you, that's all. Promise.” He doesn't include the shot that he took before the ceremony, just to calm his nerves. He and Jemma used to do that together before every opening night or award ceremony, back when they were younger and riding so high on the thrill of it all that they couldn't bear the tension.

“All right.” She looks at him like she doesn't quite believe him, but she eases back against the seat anyways with a sigh and starts listing off all the different people that she's been thinking of introducing him to, each one accompanied by a glowing description. The funny thing is, Jemma's never liked a single person that he's dated, even when she was the one who arranged it.

Later that night, Fitz goes home with a pretty brunette who came this close to winning Best Supporting Actress in a musical for the revival of _Kiss Me Kate_ and who's looking for a consolation prize. He dates her for a few weeks after and it's perfectly nice and she's sweet and funny and smart and pretty and on a check list, she ticks off every box but she's nothing at all like what (like who) he wants. And he finds himself wondering if anything (if anyone) ever will be.

7\. _You're the one girl in town I'd marry (bye bye baby, baby bye bye)_  
It's awful weather for a wedding. Fitz is glad. He's slouched against the wall of the church and his suit is probably getting soaked through and he doesn't care at all.

“Mate, please tell me you're not going to try to do the whole 'speak now or forever hold your peace' thing,” Lance says from the steps of the church. “Because it's a bloody terrible idea. And it never works—trust me, I know from experience.”

“Not even thinking about it,” Fitz lies. Because he's thought about trying to stop it a hundred times over—getting down on his knees, showing her the hundreds and hundreds of songs that he's tried to write to say just how much he loves her, asking (begging) her to pick _him_ —and he's decided against it another hundred times over. Because the only happy endings for him and Jemma are the ones that they write for the stage. “I just needed some air. The whole wedding...it's a lot.” 

Normally, Fitz does pretty well at social occasions but almost everything about this one seems to wear his nerves thin until he's ready to snap: the giant flower arrangements lining the aisle of the church that make him sneeze, the members of the Simmons family who give him sidelong looks and whisper something to each other that sounds like “thank goodness it wasn't him”, the church ushers who insist that he has to take a seat in the front pew on the bride's side, the glimpse he caught of Jemma in her white gown.

“They're starting in a few minutes,” Lance says, after a long silence where they both stare out into the rain and pretend they don't want to talk about their feelings. “Skye sent me to make sure you wouldn't miss your best friend's wedding.”

“What if I want to?” Fitz spits out, but it lacks any real heat. 

“You don't mean that. Look.” Lance sighs, tugs unhappily on the collar of his suit. “I know that you don't want to be here and I know how much something like this sucks. But Jemma's going to be heartbroken if you aren't there for her wedding and all you need to do to make her happy is suck it up for a half hour and sit through one cheesy ceremony. Come on, no one wants to see Jemma be sad—it'd be like watching a puppy get told that it's not going for a walk.” Fitz is clearly meant to laugh here. He doesn't. “All those plays and movies and songs—they're wrong,” Lance continues. “You don't swoop in at the last moment and declare your love and get the girl. That's not how real life works. You watch and you wish her the best and you live through it, because you have to, and eventually, it fades and you don't, or can't, remember the desperate way that you were in love and then you're...you're okay again.”

“You suck at pep talks,” Fitz says eventually and Lance, much to his surprise, laughs. “Let's go in before we end up being at the front of the wedding procession.”

He sits in the front pew at his best friend's wedding and he claps at all the right places and when her eyes flick over to him just before she says “I do”, he smiles at her like he's happy about it. He drinks an entire tray's worth of champagne at the reception, until the world fades away into a rose-colored haze and all the dancing figures blur together and he lurks in the back of the room until Skye finds him. She storms into his corner with three plates full of food, redoes his tie with a sharp jerk as she finishes off the knot that lets him know just how angry she'll be if he doesn't make a better effort at pretending, and makes him eat until he's sobered up enough to go offer the happy couple his congratulations. And when he dances with Jemma at the reception, he holds her tight as she rests her head on his shoulder and murmurs nonsense into his suit jacket and for a moment, he pretends that he's the one marrying her.

6\. _We've all got our junk/And my junk is you_  
“And most of all, I'd like to thank my partner Leo Fitz, who's been with me through thick and thin, through all the ups and all the downs, and who shares this award with me completely. My music can't quite function without his lyrics and honestly, I can't quite function without him.” Jemma's acceptance speech is a mess, but Fitz thanked all the important people first, from the producers to the cast to the director all the way down to the techs backstage, because it's been generally agreed that he's better at making speeches, capable of fitting in all the right people without rambling on. So she was left to babble on and cry and clutch her Tony like it's going to fly away at any minute. It's heavier than she thought it would be but she doesn't care. God, she wouldn't care if it weighed a thousand pounds because they've finally made it and the proof is right there in her hands.

“We did it,” she whispers to him after they've been ushered off stage and the post-Tony interview, but before they're allowed to sneak back into the audience. Fitz has one arm wrapped around her waist to hold her close enough to his side that the skirt of her dress brushes against his trousers with every move he makes and Jemma tips her head against his chest so she can feel his warmth and, if she listens carefully enough, hear his heart thumping away. He likes to joke that her heart beats in perfect three quarter time, but she knows the truth: her heart moves to the exact same music as his. It's part of why they're so perfectly in sync, the reason why the opening number they wrote together at midnight over the phone works, when Fitz had to fly back to Scotland to take care of his mum three days before the first draft of the show was due. They just know each other inside out, simple as that.

“Of course we did,” Fitz whispers back, leaning down so his lips brush against her ear. They're both giddy, the result a potent mix of leftover nerves from earlier in the evening, as they waited and waited for their category to appear, the sheer thrill when they heard their names being called, and the indefinable something that's hummed through the air and sung in their veins all evening. They're here, among the people that they've loved from afar for years and years, and the shine'll probably wear off soon, Jemma knows, but for tonight it's all bright and new and sparkling. And tonight they seem bright and new too, different enough that the lines between them are even more blurred than usual. 

When they were younger, people used to remark on how personal space didn't seem to exist between them, whether she was stealing bites of food off his plate or he was pulling her into his lap when there wasn't enough room on the couch. Jemma's tried to be more conscious of that lately, since she's started dating Antoine and it's serious enough that she's bothered to notice the way he fidgets uncomfortably when she drapes herself over Fitz. Since people have started to know who they are and have started to ask if she and Fitz are dating. Since she woke up twined around him one morning after a long night of writing, their hands clasped together against his sheets, and she started wondering if that was really what best friends did. But tonight is their night and this is the way that they've always been and, as Fitz quickly scoops her up in a huge hug and twirls her around the backstage in celebration, there's no one she'd rather be with.

When they get to the victory party, it's all a haze of people congratulating them and Fitz reaching for food that the waiters always seem to snatch away at the last moment and Antoine smoothly guiding her around the dance floor, not saying a word when she steps on his toes. He's handsome and kind and charming and makes her blush like she's still in high school when he smiles at her and afterward, when she's huddled on the edge of the dance floor with Skye, she can't stop giggling about him. Skye throws her arms around her in a hug so tight that it nearly breaks Jemma's ribs, shouting her congratulations loud enough to burst Jemma's eardrum, and Jemma just shouts her thanks right back. For once, she feels like everything in her life is falling into its proper place: friends, work, boyfriend, everything neatly labeled and sorted, nothing that defies definition. Nothing that confuses her with the way it makes her feel. It's around three in the morning when she finally finds Fitz again, out on the balcony with a glass in his hand and a thoughtful look on his face. “Someone ought to take a photo of you right now,” she says. “The Artist Seeking Inspiration.”

“Wouldn't be accurate anyway,” he shrugs. “It wouldn't have you in it. We're a good team, aren't we, Jemma?”

“The best.” She goes to join him, propping up her elbows on the railing and staring out over the lights of the city. Some part of Jemma still gets a little thrill at the sight of New York lit at night, the feeling that she's really a part of the city she dreamed about for years. Beside her, Fitz sighs and she knows without even having to ask him that he feels the same way. He slides his hand over until it just overlaps with hers and he can tap out a rhythm on the back of her hand. She taps a few bars back.

“You know, I don't think that I got the chance to dance with my Tony-award winning composing partner yet tonight,” he says after a while and turns to her. “Shall we?”

They're both awful dancers so there's no chance of them mastering anything complicated and instead they just sway back and forth, her arms looped around his neck and his hands resting at the curve of her waist, and ignore the noise of the party on the other side of the French doors. Fitz tugs idly at a curl in her updo until it all comes undone and twists it around and around his finger until she's even closer to him, practically pressed chest to chest, and--

In a million other universes, this is the moment where they kiss, where the hours and days and months and years that they've spent blend together into a shape that feels new and old at the same time, where a million possibilities become one inevitable fate. This is the moment where it (almost) all makes sense.

But not in this one. In this one, Jemma twists out of his arms steps back with an awkward laugh and goes ( _runs_ ) inside to find her date, because for just a moment, she feels something so huge and all-encompassing that it makes her gasp for breath and just for a moment, she is terrified. 

She pretends not to feel the hurt in his eyes as he watches her go.

5\. _Well did you evah/What a swell party this is_  
“There's a reason I don't do parties,” Jemma moans. “I don't know how to tell people what they want to hear. Much less convince them to give us money for a transfer to Broadway. Do you know how expensive Broadway is? I did some research last night and--”

“The money thing is May's job,” Fitz says confidently and links his arm with hers. “And telling people what they want to hear usually involves barely telling them anything at all. Just smile and say thank you and look gorgeous. And you've already got one out of three.”

“Well, it's definitely not looking gorgeous.” Jemma tugs at the hem of her dress with her other hand. She's convinced that it's too short and too red and just too much, despite what Skye said before Jemma left for the evening, and the sky-high black heels that go with it definitely aren't helping. She's never been good at this kind of thing, the compliments and deals and million tiny transactions that go into getting a show to Broadway, and besides, her music's always been strong enough to speak for itself. Or at least that's the way it should be. They didn't have to do anything like this for their first show, she thinks stubbornly. But then, as Fitz keeps on reminding her, their first show was in a 150 seat off-Broadway theater and they hammered out the details over the course of two coffee dates with the artistic director, where they'd mostly talked about the need for more anachronistic musicals about historical figures and the challenges of writing lead parts for altos. Jemma had worn jeans and one of Fitz's old sweaters and eaten half his sandwich right off the plate, and Fitz had gone on a three and a half minute, slightly profane rant about Cats and the artistic director had thought that they were positively charming. “How long do we have to stay? Because I wanted to change a few lines of Skye's eleven o'clock number and I should get them down before I forget it,” she mutters.

“Not long,” he promises as he steers her through the room and snags two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter's tray. “Just long enough to dazzle everyone here.”

“I don't...dazzle,” Jemma sputters. “Not like this.” She has a gift for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, like at the memorable consultation with one of her professors when they critiqued her choice of key for a piece and she explained why they were wrong for fifteen minutes straight (in her defense, they were). Put her on the spot and anything that's not music just flies right out of her head. So instead, for this evening, she's prepared an extensive set of flash cards, covering every possible remark from the very likely, such as someone asking about the show, to the extremely unlikely, such as someone complimenting her on her dress. She wishes that she'd been able to fit them into her clutch, but Fitz had swooped in at the last moment and made her leave them at home.

“You're always dazzling,” Fitz assures her and hands her one of the champagne glasses. “Have some liquid courage and then let's go say hi to May.” They weave through the room towards the older woman, who's wearing an impeccably tailored black suit and holding court in a corner, and Jemma relaxes a little at the sight of May. From the moment they first met her, May had seemed to simply radiate calm and authority, her every move bearing the promise that she knew what to do in any kind of crisis, from the miniscule to the monumental. And honestly, that's all Jemma wants right now—someone to reassure her that everything won't get snatched away from them just when they're on the brink of having it. Fitz does his best, but she knows that he'd say anything to make her feel better and more than that, that he has.

But slowly, carefully, Jemma calms down enough to follow along in the conversation and laugh and nod at all the right places. When a producer or two asks her and Fitz about the show, she talks about it passionately, eyes sparkling and hands flying as she sketches out melodies in the air, but she never goes any longer than a minute and a half. When actors try to flirt with her, she smiles up at them through her eyelashes and tosses away the slips of paper that they write their numbers down on minutes later. And when people throw a compliment her way, she gives them one right back and for the first time, she thinks that maybe she can do this.

She ends up at the piano before the night is over, of course. It's beautiful, gleaming and perfectly tuned, and the moment that she starts to play one of the melodies from the show, the whole room goes silent. Fitz drifts over to sing the words that go with her music and rests a hand on her shoulder so he can feel the music thrumming through her body too. The lyrics twine around the melody like the one never existed without the other, swooping and soaring in perfect sync, dipping down for a moment before returning to dizzying heights, her melody swelling up in response as his words build and build to a final realization. It's the last song of the show, but the one they wrote first and people start clapping before they're even done.

Afterward, they stand side by side at the piano, hands clasped together behind their backs, and Jemma realizes with a stunning clarity that forever after, this night will be etched in her memory as the beginning of a new chapter (of the best chapter yet, she tells herself) in the story of Fitz and Jemma.

4\. _I'm what you've been needing/It's all here in my heart's pleading/Let me be your star_  
“Your first show was wonderful,” May says crisply from her seat at the long casting table. “Intimate, charming, heartfelt, quirky...everything that makes a certain kind of theater critic faint with joy and write long articles about the triumph of the independent spirit. But we're hoping to have this one transfer to Broadway after it premieres at the Public and for that we need...” she trails off, prompting both of them.

“A star?” Fitz offers, leaning against the wall and trying to look like he does this kind of thing every day. He's pretty sure that he's failing horribly. Auditions start today for the show's production at the Public--for their show's production at the Public, Fitz reminds himself in another little burst of excited disbelief—and Fitz and Jemma have been alternating between wondering if they're in one of the same rooms that A Chorus Line was developed in and brief bouts of panic. Because if this show does well, it can go to Broadway and if it goes to Broadway, as everyone seems to be sure that it will...that's something Fitz can barely even imagine.

“Not quite. We need someone who's about to become one. Someone who this show will make a star,” May clarifies as she glances down at the piles and piles of head shots spread across the table.

“Whoever we choose as your leading lady will be associated with this show for...well, for forever,” Bobbi, the casting director, explains with a quick smile. “But no pressure.”

“You'll know it when you see it,” Phil Coulson, the director, says reassuringly. He's a bit of a Broadway legend, best known for surviving two shows with the famous diva Loki Odinson, telling hotshot producer Tony Stark that he could only have one set of pyrotechnnics per show, and creating the show that ran longer than Phantom by casting an endless succession of handsome men, most of them blond and named Chris, in the lead role. Fitz would be in awe if it weren't for the fact that Phil Coulson has already made three dad jokes and offered to have them all over at his house for a barbecue.

“What, will a flashing sign declaring that she's the one appear above her head?” Jemma mutters to Fitz. She's been nervous all morning, rubbing anxiously at her neck with one hand and tugging at the sleeves of her sweater with the other. Fitz has already had to sneakily swap out her caffeinated tea for herbal and hand over his scarf—Jemma gets cold when she's nervous and the air conditioning is going full blast against the muggy New York summer.

“Why, do you want to test them with the scientific method?” Fitz teases, trying to coax a smile out of her, and slips one arm around her waist to hug her as much as she'll allow. “Because that can be arranged, if you want—we'll come up with a hypothesis and everything, devise a five-step procedure, bring in some lab goggles...”

“I could have been a doctor,” she moans. “So much less stressful.”

“Nah,” he replies easily. “You were always meant to write music. And I was always meant to write the words for your music and this will work out. I promise.”

“No, I know it will,” she says impatiently, almost forgetting to keep her voice low. Fitz has steered her over to a corner of the audition room by now, while everyone else sorts through headshots and tries to pretend that they're not looking at the two of them, and they're close enough that he can hear her every last whisper, their hips brushing as she fists one hand in his shirt and pulls him close enough so she can rest her head on his shoulder. “I'm not worried about what will happen if it doesn't work out, Fitz. I'm worried about what might happen if it does.”

“Only good things, Jemma, only good things,” he murmurs and smooths a hand over her hair. When they go back to the casting table, Jemma seems a lot calmer, even if she's still clutching her mug of tea so tightly that her knuckles are white, and they just ignore the whispers from the other people at the table. A few people have started to ask them exactly what kind of partners they are but Jemma's just been shrugging and calling them ridiculous so that's what he's doing too. (Even if he's realized a long time ago that he'd like to be her partner in everything, he's content to quietly love her until she realizes it too. Because he will always be her words and she will always be his music and she has to figure it out eventually, doesn't she?)

“Ready?” May mouths over at them. They nod back in unison and one of Bobbi's seemingly endless supply of assistants goes over to open the door and usher in their first hopeful leading lady. Everyone sits up a little straighter and tries to look professional, Fitz and Jemma draw in a simultaneous breath, the accompanist plays the first few notes of the intro, the actress opens her mouth and...she's completely wrong for the part. The vast majority of the actresses they see are. There's a few decent options that they decide to call back, but no one that makes them snap to attention and hear something new in a piece of music they all know by heart. 

They're two and a half days into auditions and everyone's yearning for coffee and their own beds when Skye Johnson walks in, starts to sing, and makes everyone forget that they ever even wanted a cup of coffee in their lives. Fitz is pretty sure that the floor shakes a little when she hits her final note. In a good way.

“Do you have anything else for us?” Coulson asks and leans forward a little, trying not to sound too eager. As they have her run through half her book of songs, Fitz passes a series of hastily scribbled notes to Jemma that get more and more excited as the day goes on and as soon as Skye is done with her ballad, he practically sprints across the room to press some sheet music into her hand and coach her through one of the songs they're still working on, barely able to stay still as he talks her through it. His excitement is contagious and soon Skye's eyes are shining too and she's asking him questions about the phrasing and nodding eagerly along with him like they've known each other for years.

Afterward, Fitz is happily babbling on about Skye's range and the quality of her tone and how she sells a song and the way she seems to draw every single eye in the room towards her, until Jemma stops in the middle of the street, turns to him, and says “You like her.” She says it teasingly but it still stings.

“I don't like her!” Fitz protests. “That would be unprofessional.”

“It's all right if you do,” Jemma says, still laughing. “I think she's pretty too and you haven't had a girl for me to tease you about in ages.”

Fitz opens his mouth to tell her that the reason he hasn't been with anyone in ages is because there's only one person he can even think about wanting, to tell her that the thought of them together has hijacked his brain since it first appeared there, to tell her that maybe he likes Skye, in a vague, admiring kind of way, but he loves her. Then he thinks better of it and tells her that maybe she's right.

3\. _You're the smile on the Mona Lisa/I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop/But if baby, I'm the bottom, you're the top_  
“Polite rejection phone call number twelve,” Jemma announces and sets the phone down with a distinct thump. They've been shopping their latest show around for almost three months now, and it's been a solid string of rejections. True, their previous shows had been lucky to even get a space in a festival, but she has a good feeling about this one. It may not be the show that makes them a hit, but she thinks that, if the right person finds it, it could be the show before the show that makes them a hit. “Want to bet when we get the next one?”

“Nope. I lose every time,” Fitz says, sending a dart flying through the air to puncture the smug smiling face of one of their former classmates who has a show opening on Broadway in two weeks. His name is Colton James and his music is beyond derivative and Fitz and Jemma hate and envy him in equal measure. True, the show is some awful movie adapatation but it's still a Broadway show. “I'm pretty sure Sondheim wrote a song about this.”

“I'm pretty sure Sondheim wrote a song about everything.” Jemma picks her way through the mess of sheet music and takeout boxes that is currently their floor to rest her chin on his shoulder and wrap her arms around his waist from behind. She needs someone to lean on, just for a few moments, because she is bright and optimistic and to the outside world, she is always, always on but she is so very tired of the endless parade of rejections and she can't help wondering if it's something wrong with her music. “Do you think we should start something new? See if we have better luck with a different kind of show?”

“No,” he says firmly and covers her hand with his own. “This show is right and this show is us and all we need is to find someone who sees that. And we will, even if we have to hand-deliver copies of the score to every producer in town.”

“Maybe I should make a few more changes to the score,” she wonders. “There's those eight bars in the sixth song that still aren't sounding quite right to me. And I've been wanting to rework the opening again, because I'm thinking it might be in the wrong key--”

“No, if anything's wrong, it's the lyrics,” he reassures her. “I honestly don't know what I was thinking rhyming love and dove, even if it was meant to be ironic. I'm the one who should be fixing things. You're, er...you're the top.” 

“Oh really? I'm a Shakespeare sonnet, a Bendel bonnet, a melody from a symphony by Strauss, and Mickey Mouse?” she asks with a grin. Fitz has been obsessed with writing a good list song lately, and half the time it seems like he's humming Cole Porter under his breath.

“Better than that. You're an O'Neill drama and Whistler's mama.”

“Nicely done. But I still think the music is what needs to be fixed.” She folds her arms across her chest and sends him a look. Half an hour later, they're still bickering about what needs to be fixed when the telephone rings. “I got the last one,” Jemma hisses. “You get it.”

“No, you get it. What if it's a telemarketer? They scare me,” he retorts.

“We're too poor for telemarketers to bother us. It's got to be another producer and I've been traumatized enough for one day,” she says and stares him down until he grabs the phone from its position face down on the couch just before it goes to voice mail. 

“Hello? Yes, this is Leo Fitz...It's so great to hear from you, Ms. Weaver. We're huge admirers of the work Academe Theatre does.” Fitz always amazes her with how polite and professional he can sound, minutes after he's been eating popcorn like there's no tomorrow or quoting terrible song lyrics with a dead serious face while striking a dramatic pose on their couch. “I'm so glad to hear that...yes, we'd love to come in tomorrow...of course...thank you so much, Ms. Weaver. We'll see you then.” When he hangs up the phone, he turns to her with huge excited eyes and she knows what just happened before he says anything.

“We got it,” Jemma breathes. “She likes the show. She likes us.”

“Correction,” Fitz says as he crosses the room in three steps and sweeps her up in his arms. “She loves us.”

By the time the show opens at the Academe a few months later, it's already sold out for the entirety of its run. And on opening night, a woman in a sharp suit leaves her card with them during the cocktail reception afterward.

In crisp print against a white background, it reads _Melinda May, producer_. 

2\. _To days of inspiration, making something out of nothing_  
Fitz and Jemma moved to New York City three days ago, hauling stacks of cardboard boxes and one slightly battered piano up three flights of stairs, and their apartment is already spectacularly messy. Normally, Jemma would already have whipped out the label maker, started designing an elaborate organization system for all their kitchen cabinets, and vacuumed at least twice until every last bit of dust was gone, but she has a new song in her head and thoughts of everything else have simply flown out the window.

Fitz has been taking care of her when she gets like this for as long as he's known her, when she's so wrapped up in the melodies she hears playing in her head that she forgets about sleeping and eating and all the normal human things. Like right now, when it's getting so late that it's almost early and even the most renowned New York City takeout places have stopped delivery, Jemma is still perched at her piano, frantically erasing and adding notes to a piece of staff paper. Her hair is falling in curls down her back and the lights of the city are reflecting off her skin as she hums a few notes and just for a moment, Fitz thinks that she's so beautiful that he can practically feel his heart tighten in his chest, struck by the same electricity that sparks through his veins and makes his whole world come into focus whenever he's around her. 

“Hey, Jemma,” he says eventually, when he's finished being wonderstruck by her (but really he's not sure if he'll ever stop being that, because she's so smart and so creative and so alive with the glow of it all and she's his partner and his best friend and he still sometimes can't believe that she picked him), and slides onto the piano bench beside her. She moves over automatically and rests one hand on his shoulder, her other hand picking out a tune on the keys. “It's getting kind of late—maybe you should go to sleep now? The piano'll still be here in the morning, I swear.”

“Just a few more minutes,” she pleads. “There's five bars that I can't get right and once I get those...boom! There's the whole song. It's wrapped up tight in those five bars and I can't untangle it right now.”

“Play it for me?” he asks, leaning forward to look at her notations. She does, over and over again, and then together, note by note, progression by progression, they tease all the knots out of it. He has a better sense of pitch (but only slightly, as she likes to remind him) and so he sings the notes for her on “ahh” as she plays along, adjusting whenever she asks him.

“Do you have words for it yet?” she wonders absently twenty minutes later, when the five bars are finally sorted to her satisfaction and she's gone limp against his side with fatigue. “I'd like to hear them. We could maybe set a little bit of it right now...” With that, she gives him the wide puppy-dog eyes that have made him cave a hundred times before, because he knows the look that washes over her face every time that they put his words and her music together for the first time, and it's a marvelous thing, her wonder at creating something completely new, a song that the entire world is hearing for the very first time, and...No. He's going to stand strong this time. Because Jemma Simmons needs someone to make sure she's not going to go completely batty and he's more than happy to be that person.

“In the morning,” he tells her firmly and scoops her up off the bench. She's so light in his arms that it sends his mind off into a new spiral of worry, about whether she's been eating and if she has, how much she's been eating and if she has been eating enough, about what kind of utter crap she's been eating as fuel. (And yes, he knows that he eats utter crap too but at least he's choosing to eat it—Jemma eats like it's a requirement she's grudgingly fulfilling.) “I'll bring you croissants, too, from that one place you like in the Village. Plus muffins, if you're good and sleep at least eight hours. Straight—no waking up in the early morning to sneak out and write some more music.”

“What if I'm not good? Are you going to come out there and drag me back to bed?” Jemma mumbles against his shoulder and burrows into his shirt. She's evidently decided that she's going to fall asleep right here and now, because he is probably her favorite pillow, and so she doesn't notice when Fitz's body goes completely still and he stops in his tracks. He stands there in the hallway, Jemma Simmons pressed against him, and shuts his eyes and recites the complete lyrics to the opening of Into the Woods twice before he can go into Jemma's bedroom and set her down on her bed. He's tiptoeing out her door, after making sure she's covered by at least two blankets, when her eyes pop open and she asks him where he's going. 

“Back to my room, to get some sleep before I turn into a zombie,” he whispers.

“Nooo,” she whines. “Stay. You're nice and warm.”

“I'm not your personal heater,” he grumbles. They used to fall asleep together all the time, sprawled out on the couch at 2am, on the floor with sheets of music all around them, curled up on top of his or her covers. But lately he's been having the kinds of dreams that no one should have about their best friend, ones where he wakes up gasping for breath and yearning for things that he can't shake out of his head no matter how hard he tries. They're not even anything explicit and they still manage to make him blush whenever he wakes up from one It's the same thing every time, so simple that it takes his breath away: Jemma in his arms, stretching up on the tips of her toes to press her mouth to his, and staying with him. Choosing him. Forever.

“Please,” Jemma adds quietly. “I always sleep better when you're here.” And at that, he gives in and crawls under her blankets with her, letting her mold her back against his front and tug his arm over and around her waist. “Good night, Fitz,” she whispers happily as her eyes flutter shut.

“Good night, Jemma.” Later, he'll look back on that night and remember the wide gap between the Fitz he was when he went to sleep and the Fitz he was when he woke up that morning, tangled up with her so closely that he couldn't move without waking her too. Because the Leo Fitz who went to sleep didn't know that he was in love with Jemma Simmons and the Leo Fitz who woke up knew it better than he knew anything else.

1\. _Could it be/Yes it could/Something's coming/Something's good_  
Late at night, someone is playing the piano. Fitz can hear it all the way from his dorm room and while his roommate rolls over in bed and pulls a pillow over his head, Fitz gets up out of bed and goes looking in the hallways. At first, he has a vague idea of telling whoever's playing the piano that there are people trying to sleep here, but then he hears what they're playing more clearly. And it's like nothing he's ever heard before, a deceptively simple melody that builds and builds until he almost can't stand it and then suddenly drops down to a quiet, pure sequence of notes that he just knows are going to haunt him. 

He winds through corners and goes down flight after flight after stairs, chasing the piano player's echo. It bounces off walls and ceilings and is everywhere and nowhere all at once, until it finally leads him down to one of the ground floor practice rooms and through an open door and to her. There's a girl sitting at the piano, hands flying over the keys and head bent low like all that exists in the world is her and the music she's just created and he may be hallucinating things, but right now Fitz could swear that she's glowing. She seems so happy, so complete, in her universe of two and he can't help wishing that maybe, impossibly she could let him in too.

He stays and watches her for a minute, watches as she slows down and plays a sequence of notes a few times over, each time in a slightly different key, watches as she leans over to note something on a piece of paper, watches as she hums faintly to herself. And then he turns to go, because he tells himself that surely this is something meant just for her. Surely this beautiful, brilliant girl, the girl who even the light seems to bend towards, doesn't need anyone else in this moment. Then she turns and in that moment, she sees him and in that moment, their eyes meet and in that moment, everything changes. Words are already tumbling through his brain though, testing out different rhyme combinations and fitting syllables to her notes, and he really shouldn't but he just wants to hear what his words and her music would sound like, because he has a feeling that it would be a perfect fit.

Late at night, someone is watching Jemma play piano. She turns to confront them, ready to shove them out with a sharp lecture about the privacy of the creative process and a door slammed in their face, and then she meets his eyes. He's a freshman too, she can tell, just as unsure and unsteady as her. He's wearing wrinkled sweatpants and a t-shirt that declares _Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight!_ and his hair is a rumpled mess, but his blue eyes are shining and electric as he looks back at her. She's not sure if he even knows he's doing it, but one hand is tapping out the rhythm of her song against his thigh and he's mouthing something that looks that lyrics and Jemma just knows that he has the same fever in his blood as her. “Hi,” she whispers. “I'm Jemma.”

“Hi,” he says, flush already spreading across his cheeks. “I'm Fitz.”

“So you're the only one who got the memo about the concert?” she blurts out and curses herself a minute later. “Not that there was a concert, just me...that was a joke. I just...I'm a freshman and I'm not really used to all this and I didn't think that I would wake anyone but then I apparently did so...”

“No, no it's fine,” he protests. “It's great. I didn't mean to interrupt you but I heard someone playing and I just had to hear more. It's brilliant, that song.”

“Not as brilliant it could be,” she admits. “It's missing words.”

“Sounds like you need a lyricist. I, er, I...” he bounces from foot to foot, taps one finger against his thigh again. “I had a few ideas, while I was standing here. If you want to hear them?”

“I would. Very much.” Jemma smiles up at him and he crosses the room and sits beside her on the piano bench, already pointing out where the song begins, and now they're speaking the same language (the only universal language there is, really) and they understand each other perfectly and Jemma breathes out and relaxes and thinks, for a moment, that she could turn this into home.

Much, much, later, when the sun is already creeping over the horizon and they reluctantly stop for the night, he walks her back up to her dorm room, talking music the whole way. She watches him go from her doorway and just before he turns the corner, she says it. 

“Fitz?” At the sound of her voice, he stops and turns. “Fitz, let's write a musical together.”

16\. _Somebody need me too much/Somebody know me too well/Somebody pull me up short/And put me though hell/And give me support/For being alive/Make me alive/Make me alive_  
In the end, Jemma goes to see his show. She was always going to, she thinks in the cab on the way over, she was just waiting to summon up the courage to do it. Because god, she misses his lyrics, misses the unexpected rhymes and the way he has of layering words over words, and they're the closest thing to hearing his voice again. Because she wants to see what he has left in him, and because she wants it to be something beautiful. 

She sits in the fourth row, dead center, and she waits for the curtain to come up with what feels to her like supreme patience. Every minute that she's making small talk with the other theater people that she recognizes, every minute that she's pretending to ignore the whispers about why she's here, every minute that she's scanning the program and not reading any of it, she's just waiting for the curtain to rise and for Fitz's words to let her forget everything else.

And of course, they do. They're a punch to the gut and a knife to the chest and they're the kiss that heals all wounds, that wakes the enchanted princess from her sleep and saves her and dooms her all at once.

The show is about them.

It's a love story.

She wouldn't have expected anything else. 

Afterward, she goes backstage. No one stops her, because she's Jemma Simmons and she's the proud owner of four Tonys and a legend in her own right and because, once upon a time, she was a legend with him. And because when Fitz sees her, the world narrows down to just the two of them, caught in each other's orbit.

He has new lines around his eyes and stubble on his chin and his daughter on his lap and everything is different. He has rumpled hair and electric blue eyes and the music in his blood and nothing is different. “Hi,” she breathes.

“Jemma.” In his mouth, her name is hello and goodbye and everything in between. “You're here...you're real, aren't you?”

“What else would I be?” Then she thinks of the million different versions of Fitz that she carries around inside her head and she thinks it might be the same for him.

“You saw the show?” It's half a question, half a statement.

“I did. It's beautiful, Fitz.”

At his name, he seems to come alive again and he bends down to talk to the little girl with his eyes and Skye's face. “Lily, honey, go find your mom, okay? Tell her that your Aunt Jemma is here and that maybe, if things...if things work out, we'll all go to dinner after.” The little girl runs off and for a moment, Jemma shuts her eyes and imagines what could have been hers.

“She's beautiful, too,” Jemma adds.

“She is, isn't she?” For a moment, Fitz has a ridiculous grin on his face, nearly the same as the one he used to have whenever he played with Sophie, and Jemma just knows that, whatever his relationship with Skye is, he's a good dad. It's what he always wanted, she tells herself and tries not to be jealous when she thinks that he used to want it with her. Then Fitz starts drumming his fingers against his thigh and the smile slips from his face, and she knows that he's going to try to explain just how he got what he wanted. “Skye and I are complicated...we're not exactly conventional but we...it's a long story, if you'll stay to hear it. Please stay, Jemma. It's been five years and I...I don't know what to say,” he whispers and slumps his head, defeated. 

“No, I think you do. I saw the show, Fitz,” she repeats. “You said everything right there. And I—I'm not angry. I thought I would be, seeing us up there, but somehow I'm not. Those songs, what you wrote...” She takes a breath, steels herself, goes on. “We were in love once, weren't we? A million years ago?”

“I think we really were.”

“You wrote a hundred and ten love songs for me,” Jemma says slowly.

“I did. Some of them aren't very good,” he adds with a rueful grin. “But I started when I was seventeen, before I even knew that they were love songs, so...”

“Content dictates form, after all,” she says. “They were bound to get better once you realized what they were.”

“Less is more.”

“And God is in the details,” she says with a small smile. Those three ideas are Oscar Hammerstein's, and then Stephen Sondheim's, three rules of songwriting. For years, Fitz had them tacked up on his living room wall, right where he'd see them if he got distracted and let his eyes wander up from his notepad.

“Twenty years worth of them. I missed you, Jemma, and I'm sorry” he blurts out. “Not just because of what I said in those songs. Because of everything.”

“I...I missed you, too.” There are so many things she wants to ask him, so many blanks they need to fill in, but he's here and she's here, in the same place at the same time, and a few days ago, that would've seemed impossible to her. Most of all, Jemma wants to ask him if he's still in love with her but she suspects that she already knows the answer. She opens her mouth, to ask about dinner, to ask him where they go from here, to ask him about Skye (because Jemma misses her too), to ask him anything at all just to keep this moment alive a little longer, and then the idea hits her. It's mad and it's improbable and maybe, it's just a little bit perfect.

“Fitz,” she says, takes a step forward towards him. “Fitz, let's write a musical together.”


End file.
